Article Category: Reviews

Jessamine O Connor is a Dublin born poet living on the Sligo Roscommon border in the west of Ireland. She facilitates The Hermit Collective (an award-winning arts group), and the weekly creative writing group The Wrong Side of the Tracks Writers. She coordinates conversational English classes for Ballaghaderreen Failte Isteach and is involved in …

A new anthology from Pimento Poets, discussed by Shirley Bell A View from the Steep Pimento Poets ISBN 978-0-9929699-1-2 £7.99 I make no apology for publicising this anthology from Pimento Poets, one of the longest running and most successful poetry groups in Lincoln, even though I compiled and edited it and some of my poetry …

Jane Simmons continues her reviews of contemporary women’s poetry with this review of Hannah Sullivan’s award winning Three Poems. Faber ISBN: 978-0571337675 Hannah Sullivan’s debut collection recently won the prize for poetry in the Costa book awards. At the award’s presentation, Sinéad Morrissey said of Three Poems: A magnificent debut . . . assured, cool, and …

Christine Valters Paintner’s “Dreaming of Stones” Paraclete Press www.paracletepress.com ISBN: 9781640601086 96pp $18 “Dreaming of Stones” is split into six sections, Hours, The Time of Our Lives, Possibilities, Wild Places, Love and Monks and Mystics, and comes with an introduction and afterword by the author. There are 108 pages of poems and each feels like …

Carla Scarano D’Antonio moved to England (Lancashire then Surrey) in 2007 from Rome (Italy) and started attending creative writing courses. She obtained a Degree of Master of Arts in Creative Writing with Merit at Lancaster University in October 2012. Her work was published in Shipwrights (an online Swedish Review), Purple Patch, First Edition magazine, Northern …

The life of war correspondent Marie Colvin, by Lindsey Hilsum. Marie Colvin was a brilliant war correspondent who paid the ultimate price when she was killed in 2012 (aged just 55) in a mortar attack by Syrian government forces on the besieged town of Homs. This 400-page biography by her friend and fellow war …

PERSONA NON GRATA Edited and Compiled by Isabelle Kenyon Published in 2018 Fly on the Wall Poetry Press, UK ISBN: 978-1-9995986-1-7 Isabelle Kenyon is the editor of Fly on the Wall Poetry Press[1], and the author of Digging Holes to Another Continent and This is not a Spectacle. Kenyon writes in the introduction …

Kate Miller: The Observances Carcanet ISBN 978 1 90618 815 3 Kate Miller grew up in Hampshire and now lives in London. She was awarded the Edwin Morgan International Poetry Prize in 2008 and has received several other awards. Selected for Best British Poetry 2011 (Salt) and in 2013 and in the 2015 anthology, the Forward Book of …

Kate Ennals Threads This is a beautiful book by Cavan based poet Kate Ennals. It takes us on a journey through experience, the poet’s own, and through her eyes those of others. The collection charts life both in Ireland and in England and in a larger context it examines the world we now live in. …

Jane Simmons is a retired teacher/lecturer who is now studying for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Lincoln. She has written several short stories and is currently working on her second novel and a collection of poetry. She is a member of the Lincoln-based Pimento poets and Outspoken Poets and regularly reads/performs …

Samantha Maw is studying a Creative Writing MA at Lincoln University in the U.K. and is a member of Lincoln Creative Writers and Outspoken Poets. A qualified teacher who has worked in primary and secondary schools in the UK and in Africa; she has now gained the confidence to impose her poems and blogging …

Jane Simmons is a retired teacher/lecturer who is now studying for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Lincoln. She has written several short stories and is currently working on her second novel and a collection of poetry. She is a member of the Lincoln-based Pimento poets and Outspoken Poets and regularly reads/performs …

Way back in Issue 4, 3rd July 2017, I wrote about found poetry, and what a useful tool it could be for overcoming writer’s block. I relax by painting and I am also very fond of art journalling and making altered books, so I can often be found in what was son number one’s room wearing …

Jane Simmons is a retired teacher/lecturer who is now studying for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Lincoln. She has written several short stories and is currently working on her second novel and a collection of poetry. She is a member of the Lincoln-based Pimento poets and Outspoken Poets and regularly reads/performs …

Jane Simmons is a retired teacher/lecturer who is now studying for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Lincoln. She has written several short stories and is currently working on her second novel and a collection of poetry. She is a member of the Lincoln-based Pimento poets and Outspoken Poets and regularly reads/performs …

Samantha Maw is studying a Creative Writing MA at Lincoln University and is looking forward to developing a writing career. She is a qualified teacher who has worked in primary and secondary schools in the UK and in Africa (Uganda). She has been writing poems and stories for pleasure since childhood, and continues to pass …

Dave was born and still lives in Loughshinny, a tiny farming and fishing village in the coastal North Co. Dublin. His work has seen recent publication in a number of anthologies as well as online at sites such as madswirl.com and Medium. Dave was the originator of The Blue Nib and now plays second fiddle …

Samantha Maw is studying a Creative Writing MA at Lincoln University in the U.K. and is a member of Lincoln Creative Writers and Outspoken Poets. A qualified teacher who has worked in primary and secondary schools in the UK and in Africa; she has now gained the confidence to impose her poems and blogging skills …

Take Your Journeys Home , by Christopher Hopkins. Clare Songbirds Publishing House Chapbook Series 140 Cottage Street, Auburn, New York, 13021 www.ClareSongbirdspub.com ISBN 978-1-947653-12-2 USA, November 2017 Christopher Hopkins grew up on a council estate in Neath, South Wales during the 1970s. This fractured landscape of machines and mountains and …

Jane Simmons is a retired teacher/lecturer who is now studying for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Lincoln. She has written several short stories and is currently working on her second novel and a collection of poetry. She is a member of the Lincoln-based Pimento poets and Outspoken Poets and regularly reads/performs …

Jane Simmons is a retired teacher/lecturer who is now studying for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Lincoln. She has written several short stories and is currently working on her second novel and a collection of poetry. She is a member of the Lincoln-based Pimento poets and Outspoken Poets and regularly reads/performs …

Ceinwen has worked as a Probation Officer, a Mental Health Social Worker and Practice Educator. She lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and writes short stories and poetry. She has been published on web magazines and in print anthologies. These include Fiction on the Web, Literally Stories, Alliterati, Stepaway, Poets Speak (whilst they still can) Three Drops …

Mama Amazonica, Pascale Petit, Bloodaxe Books Paperback £9.95 9781780372945; Poetry Book society autumn choice. The blurb says :”Mama Amazonica is set in a psychiatric ward and in the Amazon rainforest, an asylum for animals on the brink of extinction. It reveals the story of Pascale Petit’s mentally ill mother and the consequences of abuse”. But this does …

From Doll House Windows, Revival Press, Limerick, Ireland, 2017, ISBN 978-0-9957333-5-0. £10/$15/€12 From Doll House Windows is Lorraine Carey’s first collection. Lorraine’s poetry appeared in Issue 10 and I was very pleased to have the chance to read more of her work in this book. I enjoyed this collection very much. Lorraine Carey has a …

On Balance by Sinéad Morrissey Paperback, ISBN: 978 1 784103 60 6 Carcanet Poetry May 2017 This is the Poetry Book Society choice for Summer 2017 and Sinéad Morrissey writes in the Summer Bulletin that “Gravity started it, or rather things which defy its force: acrobats, carrier pigeons, aeroplanes. Earth defying structures, constructed out …